Emerald Evanescence
by redexted
Summary: Repost. Some glories are long past. Some people are best forgotten. And some gifts are never meant to be used, for they hold enough power to destroy the world — and the very ones who brought them to life. ButterButch, angst, graphic violence. Chapter 3.
1. Prologue

This fic was originally posted on in 2002, but removed sometime in 2003 because of copyrighted song lyrics I included in the chapters. So I've taken away the lyrics, rewritten all the chapters (edited the overall writing style while retaining most of the original plot details), and am now reposting the fic in its entirety, since it never even made it to the last chapter the first time round.

To all those who haven't come across this fic before, it is essentially an angst-ridden story revolving mainly around teenage Buttercup and Butch, with six main chapters plus a prologue and epilogue.

And to those of you who have read it before, thank you very, very much for your return visit, and I really hope that you will enjoy it, the way I had when rewriting this story (and laughing at myself, unfortunately).

So here goes!

Disclaimer: All related characters and elements are (c) Craig McCracken. The Pendulum weapon featured in this fic is adapted from the manga _Shaman King_ and (c) Takei Hiroyuki.

Rating will go up from the next chapter onwards.

**Emerald Evanescence**  
_Prologue_

* * *

_emerald: (n.) a bright green gemstone, often valued for promising good luck, enhancing one's well-being, and its healing power; (adj.) a colour that symbolises faith and friendship._

* * *

_15 September, 1998_

They zipped around each other over row after row of houses, two streaks of green light trailing in their wake. The dying sun dipped slowly into the horizon, washing the sky around it a fiery red, and turning lavender towards the east.

One of the figures suddenly halted in midair and spun around. Her short bob of hair ruffled in the wind as she grinned at the boy behind her. "Can't you go any faster?" she mocked.

A mischievous glint reflected off the boy's dark green eyes. "Then you'd better go full speed ahead," he called back. "_Rowdyruff Rampage!_"

He sent out a rapid fusillade of optic blasts and energy spheres, but the girl easily dodged every single one of them. At last one of the blasts struck her square on the back; the impact well knocked her out of the air, and she slammed hard into the base of a tree in one of the backyards.

For a moment all was still. Then, with nothing but a pained groan, she pushed herself out of the pit of dirt and flattened grass under her.

"Do you have to be so _harsh?_" She rubbed her backside furiously, wrinkling up her black pants as she did.

The boy landed on the lowest branch in the tree. He cocked his head as he settled into a crouch with elbows on knees. "Don't tell me _that_ hurts, BC," he said, grinning down at the girl. "You know full well that I didn't give my all just now, right?"

"Thanks for the consolation," she muttered. But at that point of time she was too tired to return his previous attack, or even to hide that same weariness. So she merely leaned against the tree and gazed the house at the end of the yard. It was unlit, even though the sky was turning dark: nobody else was home yet.

The silence between the two of them ensued, disrupted only by the colony of unwary crickets in the surrounding vegetation, warming up and playing a full orchestra in preparation for the night. It was a long time before the boy spoke.

"Check this out, Buttercup. Got it from somewhere outside town."

There was a glint of something that soared down from the depths of the branches, and Buttercup, quick to react as always, grabbed it in a flash and stared closely at it. It was a strange device, almost the length of her lower arm, with two sleek leather straps hanging down from it. A round silver cap the size of a minidisc sat at one end of the device, and right next to it, docked inside a metal U-shaped holster, was a small, diamond-shaped crystal that shone a clear green in the waning light. It was pointed at the centre much like a low pyramid, and unusually solid in its weight as she held it in her hand.

"What's this, Butch?" she asked.

"It's _yours,_ that's what it is. I've got my own too." Butch leapt down onto the ground beside her, and retrieved a similar gadget from his cargo pants pocket. He strapped it into place onto his lower right arm — the end of his dark green crystal pointing out towards his palm — and sneaked her a grin.

"Now watch this," he whispered.

A sharp fling of his arm, and the crystal shot out straight into the air, its brilliant green stark against the blaze of the sunset. The only thing stopping it from flying away entirely was the thin metal cable attached to it at the other end, seemingly endless as it uncoiled from inside the silver cap at breakneck speed with a dull whirr. Its flight was smooth, and swift, and ended abruptly only when the vertex of the crystal struck a falling leaf, and pinned it against a tree almost fifty feet away.

With another twitch of Butch's arm the crystal retracted into the device, the leaf breaking into pieces that fluttered towards the ground. But then the wire slowed down, until only a small length remained outside, dipping and rising like a standing wave in mid-air. The eight-sided diamond floated horizontally at the end of the cable, and pointed straight at an utterly speechless Buttercup.

"Butch!" she breathed. "That's . . . that's just about the _coolest_ thing I've ever . . . Where in the world did you get that?"

Butch just tilted his head as he always did, and raised an eyebrow at her with a small smile as his crystal slinked back into its holster. She fastened the device in her hand onto her arm as well, inspecting the crystal whose power she now knew it held, as she herself did. The power of _flight._

She closed her eyes. She tried to imitate how Butch controlled the gadget — with controlled flicks and arcs of the arm it was strapped onto — then threw her arm out towards another red leaf dancing in the sky. It went through the heart of the leaf easily, and she gave a whoop of delight. Butch just kept on smiling.

"You learn pretty fast, don't you," he said.

This time she ignored his compliment. "Why didn't you ever tell me that you had this . . . this _machine?_" she asked, watching as the wire slid home onto her arm by itself, and turning to look straight at him. "Or at least, you _could_ have asked me along to wherever you found it, right?"

"Touchy." He clicked his tongue as he sat down on the grass, leaning his back against the rough bark of the tree. "I got one for you as well and now you're complaining?"

"I never said that," she snapped.

"But you _meant_ that. Anyway—" Butch took a deep breath as he tried to recall. "I found it by chance. There's this weird old man with a really long brown beard — I don't know, like five feet long? — and he was just sitting at the corner cafe near Clarkesville. Then he saw me flying."

"And?" It was a casually spoken word. But it couldn't hide the way she was hanging on to his every syllable, picturing it all in her mind and wishing she were there. And Butch decided to embellish his story. Just a little.

"He almost conked out when he saw me flying like that, okay?" He rolled his eyes. "Anyway, he beckoned me over once he got his bearings right, and just gave me this big metal case. And he told me to keep whatever it was inside the case, to use them well."

"So you just _took_ it? Even though it could be _drugs_ or stuff inside?"

Butch threw up his arms. "Of course I did think about it for a while — I mean, he really _looked_ like a junkie, what with his mess of a coat and this tatty cap covering like half his face. But there was something in his eyes that told me I _should_ take the case, and so . . . and so I did. And when I opened the case to see what was inside and ask him what they were, he simply _disappeared_. How freaky is that?

"And I don't even know why it should be _me_, or why it's these two strange things and not some other super-powerful weapon or anything," he continued, not noticing Buttercup's reaction — or lack of it. But eventually he caught her eye, and grinned sheepishly. "I thought they looked similar, and maybe one was enough for me after I'd learnt what it could be used for. So . . . um, I thought I'd just give you the extra one."

Her face was sceptical. "Really."

He scowled at her. "Suit yourself," he muttered, then went about examining the device closely for a while. "But this gizmo is really neat, come to think about it," he added.

". . . Guess so."

She glared at the still unlit house, ignoring both Butch and the coolness of the device against her arm. Funny how they could stop talking to each other just because of a present they got from some unknown guy, she thought.

"Show you something else, gorgeous." Butch's voice drifted over from behind her.

"I don't care," she mumbled; and then, after she properly digested his words: "Hang on, why the hell did you call me g—"

"Wait," he shushed her. He stood up and hovered a little above the ground, his feet dangling level with her shoulders. With another fling of his right arm the crystal cut through the air like a torpedo; it hit another tree across the neighbouring yard, and quivered half-embedded in its trunk.

Buttercup sniffed. "Hell, I could do that too."

But even before her last word died away she heard a small click, and Butch shot up along the path of the wire at incredible speed. Like an automated grappling hook the gadget pulled him up, and he sailed in an arc to where the crystal was, landing smoothly on one of the sturdy branches of the tree.

And it was a success — not just because he managed to pull off this display, but because Buttercup now stared after him with her mouth agape, her wide green eyes almost taking up her entire face.

He grinned to himself.

"Well?" he prompted aloud. "Can you do _that_ now?"

Down on the ground, Buttercup bit her lip. She had _almost_ wanted to gush at his skills in manoeuvring that little machine, _almost_ admitted that he was smarter than she was in too many things. But she shook her head and cleared her mind of those thoughts, instead gritting her teeth as she mimicked Butch. Her crystal, to her dismay, remained quite stationary.

Butch's silhouette in the distant tree writhed with laughter. "_Concentrate_, you twit! Do you see that square button thing at the side?"

She was indeed the fast learner that he thought she was — though not before she cursed herself for missing the button before. In no time she was on her way skyward as well, the initial burst of energy from the contraption so immense that she lost her balance, and her world tilted. She had no time to brake — no, she had not learnt _how_ to. And her innate ability to fly had suddenly gone haywire as well.

_Thanks a lot, Butch,_ she yelled at him inside her head.

As she shot past Butch's tree flailing he managed to, at the last possible second, dart up and grab her firmly by the waist. And his hand stayed there even as the two of them landed safely on the same branch.

"Take your bloody hand off already," she spat at him.

He pretended to give a little whimper, but obliged when she threatened to shove him off their perch. Still he couldn't stop laughing, not even when Buttercup spotted the tears glinting at the corners of his eyes, and he gave her no chance to retaliate.

"_You!_ You should've seen yourself go up like that! What _madness!_ What happened to you, anyway? Couldn't check your speed as well as I did, eh? _Eh?_ But I tell you what — you did great. You did _fabulous!_ Oh yes, that pose in the air, it was a perfect imitation of a _dead duck_ . . ."

By that time Butch had his forehead pressed against the trunk, fists pounding its bark over and over as he went on laughing his pants off.

Buttercup rubbed at her nose angrily. "Just shut your trap, will you?" she retorted. "I bet that was a better first try than you probably had for that trick. Wasn't it, huh? And just shut up already! _Shut up!_"

She raised a hand, meaning to punch the living daylights out of him. But before she could bring it down he grabbed her by the wrist, and yanked her whole self towards him, until they were facing each other, their eyes inches apart from each other's.

The smile he flashed at her then, she knew, would have made her heart skip a beat or two — were it not for the stray tear of mirth that finally slipped its way down his face.

"You know what I heard from somewhere? I can't remember if it was from a song, or a book, or from some TV show . . . but it went something like this—" He gazed into her eyes, his own dark green ones darting, ever so slightly. "_Everything that you see through your tears will always be the most beautiful of all . . ._

"_And it doesn't matter whether it's within your reach, or within your means, or within your rights . . ._" His hand let go of hers, and instead reached out to touch the side of her face.

Buttercup flinched. She was sure he was just trying to throw her off with his blether, yet at the same time she _knew_ there was some underlying meaning to everything that he said.

At least, she hoped there was.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," she mumbled. Her face, whether in betrayal of her own words or stirred by the touch of his fingers, started to flush a furious pink. "And anyway, I _don't_ think that was supposed to be tears of _laughter_—"

"Is it?" Butch deliberately pushed his face closer to hers, his voice somewhere in between growling and teasing. "Does it even matter?"

She switched back to her usual denial mode. "Oh, just shut up will you?" she snapped, pushing him off the branch — oh, the fresh air that promptly took his place! — and touching down back in their own backyard, relieved that her powers were back once more. Butch, as though to mock her further, was swinging in the air behind her as though in an invisible hammock, smiling with his arms tucked behind his head. The words he had said to her earlier — and what it could have entailed — seemed to have escaped him for the moment.

"This thing," Buttercup said quickly, turning to inspect the shining crystal in the device on her arm. "It . . . it kind of looks like a pendulum, doesn't it?"

"Yeah. I guess you could call it that, then." He slid off his hammock and over the fence that separated their yard from their neighbour's. "But whatever it is, you gotta remember that _I_ was the one who gave it to you," he pointed out. "Because we're— we're friends, you see."

She snorted. "_Friends?_" Maybe laughter killed off his brain cells, too.

"Or maybe _more_ than that, if that's what you want . . ." He eyed her slyly, his black hair glinting in the sinking sun as he spread his arms and leapt towards her—

"Perv! Take _that!_" With a yell Buttercup shoved him back and gave him a good hard punch in the stomach. Butch fell back down onto the lawn and rolled around in mock pain.

"Oh, _brother!_" he cried, the melodramatic streak in him revealing itself yet again. "Why can't you just be gentler like any other girl your age?"

Buttercup turned away. She suddenly did not want to look at him — not because of his absurdly poor acting, but because of what he had said just now.

_More than . . . more than just friends?_

Perhaps she should have given in, or at least tried to, now that they were already fourteen.

She sneaked a peek at Butch. He was watching her too, an all too devious grin curling up his face as he propped himself up on his elbow. For once, she noticed that — even after all that flying and shoving around — his hair was neatly combed down, save for that stubborn cowlick, and overall he looked pretty much cleaner than he used to be.

"What?" he asked slowly. "You like the idea?"

A nervous smile found its way up the corner of her mouth, but still she said nothing. She looked away, and instead gazed at the distant quarter of sun still above the rooftops of the neighbourhood.

"You don't mind, do you?"

By then Butch had already stood up and strode over to her, his fingers flitting over the apple green tee she was wearing: a mere fabric between his touch and her waist.

_There's no harm assuming. No harm trying, if that's what he wants._

"Hands off and I might recon—" she began.

"_Just kidding!_" he yelled into her ear. Then, in another bout of careless laughter, he fell onto the ground, hands clutching his stomach from all the stitches. "Did you really think you can stop being a tomboy and all?" he managed to wheeze amidst his howling. "Did you really think that I'm going to like you one day if you start wearing dresses and stuff? That's so _not_ going to work! Ever!" And he went back into his spell of laughter once more.

What had been a violent pumping in her chest now came to a halt as a cold wave rushed over her. All she could do then was stand there, her silhouette against the flaming orange spectacle in the sky behind her, the laughter at her feet fading away, ever so slowly.

_Maybe._

_So everything was just a maybe._

_-tbc-_


	2. Chapter 1: snap

Note: Some details in the prologue have been changed since the initial upload.

Thanks to everyone for reading!

Miscellaneous supporting OCs ahead. Rated M for graphic violence.

**Emerald Evanescence**  
_Chapter 1: snap_

* * *

_snap: (v.) to break or give way suddenly and completely; to lose one's self-control, usually without warning._

* * *

_26 August, 2002_

The bustle of hurried footsteps. Girls gathered in their cliques carelessly giggling, their faces caked in lipstick and powder. The guys from the football team hollering to their friends across the hallway. Lockers doors slamming, books dropping onto the floor. They lay open on the grey cement like the bodies of paper birds, before being hastily picked up.

A dark figure wove her way through the hot, sweaty bodies of the crowd and towards her own locker. Her long, black bangs fell over her face as she turned the combination lock. A dull silver ring hung from a leather cord around her neck, nearly hidden under the high white collars of her shirt, which she wore under a deep green T-shirt. Her sneakered feet tapped in impatience until the lock clicked under her fingers.

She had changed much in the past few years, though only a few knew her long enough to even notice that. She had grown an inch or two taller than her two sisters. Her hair, now reaching her shoulders, curled inwards just above her collarbone, falling about her face in a manner that hid her features well from everyone around her. Just as she wanted.

But there were some who had tried befriending her before: desk neighbours from different classes, track seniors wanting her on the school team, even fans who had rooted for her ever since she and her sisters came to be. All of them saw how strangely _silent_ she was, felt the _coldness_ of this silence, and eventually they left her quite alone. Even now, as she fiddled with her locker in the hallway, there was a small circle of space around her. Almost indiscernible in the ever-moving throb of people, but it was there, always. And she knew it.

She yanked opened her locker door at last. A stale, musty smell of paper engulfed her, along with the hint of sweat. Her eyes narrowed as she stared at the textbooks and forgotten spare clothes inside the locker. She would have to clear out that mess soon.

Two small photos graced the stripped coat of paint on the back of the metal door, stuck in place with peeling tape. The candid shot on top showed her and a boy — both with unruly dark hair — wrestling with each other in a backyard, and a look of surprise on her face as she saw the flash of the camera.

She smiled tightly. It had seemed like ages ago, just one scene out of many in a fading sea of memories, but she remembered it clear as day. That was the day she received the Pendulum from him. It had been a casual gift, nothing more — but she had grown to treasure it very much. To her it was more than a mere gift of appreciation, of acceptance . . . of friendship.

But she had never told him that. He wouldn't have understood, anyway.

The other picture was of herself and her sisters, taken at the wooden steps of the porch only a few months before. Blossom sat on the right, the pleasant smile on her face framed by her long orange hair that glowed like a halo under the afternoon sunlight. Everything about her was perfect: her slender figure, her outgoing personality, and her kind heart. _Everything she wasn't._

Bubbles, sitting with her ankles crossed, smiled out of the picture with one hand raised in a victory sign. She wore her blonde hair in a low ponytail over one shoulder. Her clothes — jeans coupled with a white cardigan over a tank top in pale blue — gave the image of a bright and bubbly girl, in both name and character. _Everything she wasn't._

And seated between the two of them, she herself seemed almost like a shadow, of both her sisters and her former self. She wore an ensemble of black and a grim smile; the only specks of colour on her were her stark green eyes that stared back, almost distantly, at the camera. But it was clear from those eyes that she was losing touch with her present, whether it was just among the three of them then, or filled with other people like now. _And that was her._

She ran a finger across the glossy photograph.

_Nothing had changed._

_. . . No, _everything_ had._

As she pulled her books from the depths of the locker, a slim shadow closed in from behind her. A thick flowery scent wafted into her bubble of space, and almost made her gag.

"So, Buttercup, it's the first day of school. Aren't you excited?" asked an equally sweet voice.

She dumped her last book into her backpack and slammed the door shut in reply. But she watched out of the corner of her eye as the other girl opened the locker right next to hers. She was wearing knee-length lace-up boots, a purple pinstriped dress that barely covered half her thighs, a white cropped blazer, and a long golden necklace with a heart-shaped charm at the end of it. Her lavender-dusted eyelids complemented her blue eyes, as the pink gloss on her lips did to the auburn curls tumbling down her shoulders.

Tara adjusted the face mirror hanging on the inside of her locker door as she open her compact with her other hand. "It's such a pity," she said, seemingly to herself, though her eyes were now watching the other girl closely. "Some people just make beauty and charm so _effortless_, I guess. Not like those who can't get a look from anyone no matter how hard they try . . ." She gave a small laugh in falsetto and went on powdering her face. Buttercup could almost feel the particles of her foundation penetrate her locker door and smother her.

"First impressions do matter, you know. Especially on the first day of _anything_." There was a click: Tara's compact had snapped shut under delicate fingers. "Imagine coming to school and looking forward to a wonderful year ahead, then turning the corner and seeing some people drag themselves across the floor, looking like such a . . . _disaster._" She imagined Tara shuddering to herself in disgust as she dropped her compact in her tote bag, but said nothing in return.

A few awkward seconds later Tara suddenly swung her locker door, leaving it just slightly ajar, and widened her eyes at the girl beside her. "I wasn't talking about you just now, Buttercup!" she insisted, her face one of alarm. The heels of her boots clicked sharply against the floor as she made her way over, hips swaying a little more than was necessary, and placed a slender hand on Buttercup's shoulder. Her painted nails shone in the harsh light of the hallway; her bright blue eyes were almost pleading. "Please don't get the wrong idea!"

Buttercup clenched her teeth. In the shadows of her locker her fingers dug into the flesh of her palm, and her knuckles shook, ever so slightly.

Tara immediately realised what she was doing, and whisked her hand off the other girl. She blew at her fingers daintily, as though it was slime that they had just touched, and readjusted the straps of the tote on her shoulder.

"Anyway," she went on, going back to shut her locker. "I'm going out with Butch tonight. Movie date." She tossed Buttercup a sympathetic smile. "It's strange, really. You've known him for so long — but you guys have never gone out _even once?_ You should've given him a chance . . . to _see_ you, I mean. Instead of blending in with the shadows all the time."

Buttercup closed her eyes. Her bones cracked as she clenched her fist even more tightly. Her right hand slowly reached into the depth of her locker—

_No._

—and closed upon something cold and hard.

_Not here,_ his voice echoed inside her head.

She withdrew her arm. Now sitting in her hand was a metallic object that glinted under the fluorescent lights. An emerald sat tucked inside its holster, its many facets gleaming, almost with a glow of its own.

"And anyway, I just don't understand why you and Butch turned out so different when you both _look_ so similar. You can at least try to be a little bit more like him, you know . . ."

Tara's babble went on, peppered every now and then with exaggerated hand gestures and expressions. And still it did, even as there came a soft click of fastening clasps, a shifting of metallic wire in a spool, eager to break free from its home.

". . . maybe he'll bring me to winter formal. And who knows — if we really click he might even ask me to prom! I've had my eye on this _fabulous_ silver gown from Stacie's upcoming collection . . . I'm sure it'll totally match the little tiara that might _just_ end up on my head—"

"_Shut up,"_ whispered Buttercup.

"—and _he'll_ be right next to me with everyone looking, of course." Tara noticed the other girl not listening, but not the strange addition to her lower arm. "Oh well," she sighed, shrugging, as she swivelled around to walk away. "I guess it's time to go—"

"I said _shut the hell UP!_"

Buttercup flung her arm out behind her. In one split second a glowing green light zipped out from the contraption on her arm and wove in and out of Tara's body over and over, wire flashing in the fluorescent lights as it pierced channel after merciless channel through the girl, flawless skin and designer clothes and all.

Around them, the many other students fell still. Every single word among them dropped like pins onto the floor as every head turned in Tara's direction. Buttercup stood in the midst of them all, her head still bowed, her arm still stretched towards Tara.

Tara's bag slipped off her shoulder. It hit the floor with a dull thud, books and purses spilling from it and across the floor. Her mouth was agape, sharp and shallow breaths half-caught in her throat, and her eyes wide with shock.

The cable had sliced in through the small of Tara's back, turning sharply around the front before diving into another point on her body. Over and over it did, until it burst all around her in a grotesque parody of a dragonfly with too many wings. The frame of each wing stood quivering upon the girl's body, stained in a rich crimson that glistened thick and sharp against the paleness of her skin. And thrusting out from the centre of her forehead was a small emerald crystal, its very tip dripped with that very same blood down her nose, her lips, her chest, her legs. The blood finally gathered at her feet in a puddle that grew and grew, and drained her life with every passing second.

A small voice drifted over from behind Tara as the crowd gawped at the horrific spectacle before them.

"You won't understand."

The words pierced through Tara's ears like a winter chill, stinging her to the very last bone. They were the last she would ever hear.

The emerald withdrew, slowly at first; then, once through the back of her head it picked up speed, cutting through the rest of her body in reverse, each puncture oddly smaller than the width of the crystal would allow. As each of the triangular wings vanished more blood spurted out, spattering onto the cement floor and onto the dumbfounded faces of the many onlookers around the girl. At last the crystal was free, and it slunk back into its home that was the Pendulum on Buttercup's arm, drenched in that same deep shade of red as the girl once known as Tara was.

And she fell.

Her face hit the floor first, slamming into the ever-growing pool of her very own blood. The rest of her body crumpled in a graceless sprawl she herself would have been ashamed to see. Her blazer was now a blood-soaked red, as was her tangles of hair. Her eyes, still wide with terror, stared out and up at the very person who took her life away thus so.

Someone gave a muffled scream. At that moment pandemonium broke out — girls fainted, boys scrambled, teachers and students alike stumbled back, terrified by the gruesome sight before them. They screamed and backed away from the lone girl who still stood beside the dead Tara, and out of the doors at the end of the hallway.

The emerald, now nested in the Pendulum and splashed with red, glowed more brightly than ever. Buttercup's arm trembled. Her eyes shone, the overhead lights dancing wildly upon green as she stared back into Tara's lifeless face.

"_Goodbye,"_ she whispered.

With a strained cry she ran to the other end of the corridor and flew out through a closed window, shattering the glass into silvers that circled the wall like a broken fan before plummeting towards the ground.

– – –

Over at the other end of the school grounds, a young man snapped up his head and looked around. Everything seemed normal. It was still the same library, the same clusters of people reading, the same old librarian at the information desk. But _something_ was amiss, he knew.

His hands paused on the pages of the volume he was holding, as he stood still in one of the aisles between the reference bookshelves. And then, for some reason he did not know, he turned to look at his backpack at his feet.

From underneath the top flap of the backpack he saw something — a small green light winking in the darkness, almost glowing. His heart gave a lurch as the image of a once-familiar machine flashed across his eyes. He thrust an arm towards the glow in his backpack and pulled it out: it was his mobile phone, small and metallic grey, the green indicator light on its shell blinking in time with an envelope icon on the corner of the screen.

"Butch?" A blond-haired girl paused at the end of the aisle and stared at him. She was carrying a small pile of books in her arms. "Are you okay? You look a bit . . ."

Butch raised his eyes and let out a deep breath. "I'm fine, Dion," he said to her, smiling as he stuffed the phone into his jeans pocket.

"Oh." She pulled absently at the white scarf draped across her shoulders. "Well, then I guess we'd better get going. The lecture's starting in ten."

Dion picked up her bag that was beside Butch's, and slipped her books into it one at a time. Then she looked at him again. "Are you sure you're all right?" she asked, her brow furrowing.

Butch saw that his fingers were gripping tight onto the book he was holding. He eased, and swiftly slotted the book back onto its shelf. "I said I'm fine." He gave her another bright smile, and snatched his backpack off the floor. "Come on, let's go."

And as the two of them made for the library exit, the little green light that peeked from the edge of his pocket flashed one last time, and died away.

_-tbc-_


	3. Chapter 2: purge

If you braved through the potential absurdity that was the previous chapter to read this, then you have my very sincere thanks. I promise everything will make sense eventually.

Chapter 2 is GO!

**Emerald Evanescence**  
_Chapter 2: purge_

* * *

_purge: (n.) a removal, typically abrupt or violent, of a group of people from a place; a removal of an unwanted feeling, memory, or condition in a similar manner._

* * *

_9 September, 2002_

She sat in the alley, a shadow lean and uncertain against the muddy darkness of the night. Her legs were bent before her, and her arms limp on her sides. From somewhere near her right wrist pulsed a soft green glow, crackling as the dried blood on it hissed into vapour and drifted away.

Above her, patches of yellow light shone from the few working lamps with a low buzz. One of them flickered on and off, on and off, until it spluttered and finally died. Stray sheets of paper rustled across the lane in the cold night breeze. A crescent of moon hung in the otherwise dark sky, purple clouds racing across it in a bid to snuff out its meagre light.

The girl's tangled black hair glinted dully. Behind the too-long fringe over her face her fiery green eyes stared, into the emptiness around her.

_Seven days._

Her lips curled. Tara would have made a magnificent sculpture, she thought wryly. If only she had stood a little longer. If only all that blood had not weighed her down.

A sudden wind carried an old newspaper leaf over the still-glowing crystal. At once a blinding white flame rose, and the paper sizzled into smoke and ashes. But a small square at the corner of the sheet survived: a black-and-white photograph, its tones smudging into one another in the watery light of the alley. Six lively teenagers — three boys and three girls — grinned out from the photograph, either punching their fists into the air or flashing victory signs. Behind them was a mermaid-like creature, very much beaten-up and suspended helplessly from a crane. Hundreds of citizens gathered around the base of the crane, in frozen applause and smiles of relief.

The girl picked up the picture gingerly. The caption below it read:

"_The Powerpuff Girls and Rowdyruff Boys saved the day once again yesterday after defeating the Spitting Styx. The creature had threatened to destroy the whole of Townsville with its venom that ate into buildings and vehicles in a matter of minutes."_

Her fingers trembled as they gripped the newspaper article. Memories came swimming back in her mind, even as she tried to push them away.

_She_ was the one who devised the plan to get rid of that monster. _She_ was the one who hauled it away before it could destroy the mayor's manor with its poison. _She_ was the one who dealt it the final blow. And the one who got the most credit in the end as usual—

"_The leaders . . ."_

Her whisper came out bitter, strained with an agony buried for years forgotten. As though in reply the glowing crystal by her side gave a pulse; a small white fire, dashed with electric blue, swelled from its heart, and shot out towards the photograph. The paper withered under the heat and scattered, cinders in the breeze that went on gliding across the alley.

She crumpled into the silence of the night once more, shrinking into it like a cheap shirt in a washing machine. The pain in her heart now — she knew it all too well. It was one that had always stood out like a beacon, sharp against the endless churnings of night and sea.

"_But do you have what it takes?"_ came a wispy voice from the darkness. Its echoes sank down over the girl, and slowly faded away.

She raised her head. Hovering before her at eye level was a white humanoid figure with threads of matter in place of hands and feet. It seemed almost an intangible being, a hybrid of electricity and fire. And it was staring right at her with slit-like eyes brimming with white light.

"Who are you?" she asked sharply.

"_That is not important."_ The voice was more solid now, coming out in a drawl that was at once proud and sinister. The sleek tentacles that made the figure's arms floated closer to her face. "_If you wish, I can help you. I can give you the power you have always wanted . . ."_

_Power?_

"_Yes, power,"_ the spirit replied, echoing her thoughts. The lower half of its featureless face twisted to give what looked like a smirk. _"The power to change everything that you have now. To avenge yourself. And to _destroy_ . . ."_ Its words drifted over to her as temptations dark as night, yet brighter than anything she had ever come across. No, not temptations — they were _promises_ of what she should have had in the first place, of what she was still denied of, even after she took the cure . . .

In that moment she saw those promises most clearly, and her heart whispered in agreement. There wasn't much of a choice for her. There never had been.

_. . . Please._

With a triumphant cackle the spirit raised its arm. The fraying ends of it coalesced into long fingers — claws, she realised — and grabbed her by the forehead, so tightly that she gave a startled cry. A green mist seeped from the claws in through her brow, shuddering with the tremendous force that coursed through them, and into the tips of her hands and feet. The spirit reached out with its other arm, the burning tips of its sickle-like claws tapering into a smaller trail of light that trickled into the emerald of the Pendulum. All this ghostly energy the crystal absorbed, building itself up with power that the unknown being was bestowing upon it and its owner.

And as the claws lashed up towards the night the streams of light broke, and the spirit vanished into thin air. The girl gave a shudder and slumped onto the ground, the light in the crystal on her arm winking out along with her consciousness.

– – –

Bubbles sat in the armchair at the corner of the room, weeping quietly. A blond-haired boy put a hand on her shoulder and comforted her. He raised his eyes as the door at the other end of the room opened, and in strode a young man in a cap.

"Any news of her?" Blossom asked. She rose from her seat by the window, though her hands never stopped wringing.

Brick slammed the door shut. "No."

"But— but where could she have gone?" Bubbles wailed. "It's already been more than a week! And after what she did to— to Tara—" She broke into tears again, and Boomer pulled her into his arms.

"Don't ever bring up that matter again!" snapped Blossom.

Brick stared at her. "We have to, Bloss," he said softly, tossing his cap carelessly onto the couch and sitting down. "We need to know why she did it. And we'll find her, I promise."

Blossom sank into the space beside Brick, her red barrette almost dangling off her fringe. She pulled it off and refastened it into her hair with nervous fingers. "I'm sorry . . . I don't know what's come over me." The silver earrings on her ears jangled as she snapped the clip shut once more. "If— if I'd known she would go to the extent of . . . of _killing_, I would've—"

Brick took her hand in his gently as she took a shuddering breath.

"I'm sorry, Buttercup, wherever you are," she mumbled. A stray tear ran down her face, and she hastily wiped it away. "I'm so sorry . . ."

Brick glanced at the clock. It was already past two in the morning, but no one seemed to be in the mood to sleep.

"Butch?" he called.

There was no answer.

He let go of Blossom's hand and stood up. "Butch, where the hell are you? Answer me!"

Still no answer. The room was silent, save for Bubbles' sobbing.

Cursing under his breath, Brick stormed up the stairs leading to the first floor of the house. He refused to fly, unless the situation called for it. At last he reached the last door along the hallway, and kicked it open with a deafening slam.

Butch was sitting on a swivel chair, his legs propped up on the desk. The light from the table lamp fell upon his face, and the mobile phone that he had crammed between his shoulder and ear. Outside the open window the crickets chatted, in place of the conversation that had ensued only moments before.

"Hang on," Butch said into the receiver, then covered it with his free hand before turning to glare at the red-haired youth in the doorway. "_What?_" he hissed.

"You still dare to ask me _what?_" Brick snapped back. "She's been missing for one entire _week_ and here you are, talking into the damned phone like nothing's happened? And at this time of night?"

Butch turned away. "I'll call you again tomorrow, Dion. Yes. Love you too." He clapped the phone shut and glowered at Brick again, his dark green eyes flaring.

Brick strode over and yanked his brother up by the collar. The mobile phone clattered onto the floor between the two of them. He would have punched Butch right there and then, were it not for the words that he struggled to say in his rage. "You . . . you goddamned piece of—"

"_Shut up already!"_ Butch shot back. "I've had enough of all your prattling! And I'll have you know — _she doesn't dictate my life, and I don't dictate hers._ I don't care what she's done or where she's gone, so just shut the hell up about her and leave me alone."

He shoved Brick hard into the frame of the doorway. But Brick, recovering fast, sprang up once more and slammed his fist into Butch's jaw. The force from it sent him sprawling into his swivel chair and right into the wall-high shelves across the room. Books and figurines tumbled out, and he gave a grunt each time they hit him.

Brick stood up straight once more, his breaths jagged as he watched a winded Butch groaning and clutching his chin.

"I don't know what you're thinking," Brick said coldly, "and I don't care either. She's your responsibility as much as she's ours, and if you're not going to do anything about it you can forget about staying on the team. _And_ in this house."

Butch said nothing as his brother strode out of the room. Something thick and sharp started trickling down the corner of his lips, and he swiped it off with the back of his hand. He slumped off the chair, breathing heavily as he lay flat on the floorboards amongst his belongings. But his face was turned towards the lamplight and his eyes fixed not at the mobile phone that lay in pieces before him, but on the last drawer of his desk at the other side of the room.

– – –

"Please, no! Let go of me!" A shrill cry shattered the stillness of the night and echoed down the alley — right into her train of thoughts.

"C'mere, girl," sniggered a scratchy voice. "Don't be so shy . . . Or d'you want to come home with me instead?"

"_No!_ Help! Somebody help me, please! Some—"

The wails suddenly dissolved into muffled whimpers.

"Can't scream anymore, can you? Pretty little thing . . . I'll give you something _else _to scream about later . . ." The voice came from a scrawny man in a leather jacket, his unruly mop of hair a silver halo against the faraway lights of the main street. He kept his palm cupped over the poor girl's mouth, even as she — a mere teenager, she saw — tried to squirm her way out of his slimy grasp. His other hand took hold of the shoulder strap of her blouse and yanked it down her arm. It gave way with a dreadful ripping sound, and she gave a muffled cry as her attacker went on, hands and lips going further than was necessary.

From its hiding place behind a pile of discarded crates rose the emerald crystal, tethered by the rope of steel behind it that dipped into a V shape. The crystal's tip pointed straight at the two figures at the end of the alley. A tiny sphere of light glowed in its heart, swirling with trails of white mist that had not been present before, and brightening with every passing second.

Buttercup snapped the Pendulum into place and got to her feet, silent as a panther on the prowl. As she strode closer she raised her arm; the octahedral crystal, in an almost sentient response, zigzagged across the musty air in a horizontal plane. Once across the alley it plunged itself into its intended target: right in the middle of the man's chest.

The man let go of the girl in his arms and stumbled, as a gurgle caught halfway in his throat. The girl scrambled away towards the opposite wall with a terrified cry. She clutched at her rumpled clothes and stared, wide-eyed and shaking, as the man looked down at the thing now sticking out from his chest. Blood spilled out from the wound in torrents, almost invisible in the semi-darkness of the alleyway.

Deep in the shadows, Buttercup's glowing green eyes gazed at the brightest thing of all: the bluish-white flame in the crystal, half-embedded in the man's body, and charring both flesh and fabric as it burned. A drawling voice echoed from behind her ears, and she closed her eyes.

"_I— Ignite,"_ she whispered.

The emerald shot upwards. It sliced clean through the man's skull and arced high into the air; with another jerk of her arm it dived back into the Pendulum. The man gave one last twitch — the strange liquids from inside his head leaking all over his face — and crumpled onto the ground.

The girl gave a strangled scream. Her eyes rolled to the back of her head, and she slumped down as well, her waves of hair soaking in the juices that still seeped from the broken head of her attacker — in gross semblance to what had happened to a young woman named Tara, exactly seven days ago.

From the distance came the chime of a clock tower. As its second and final toll died away one of the lamps in the depths of the alley flickered back to life, and revealed nothing but a stack of old crates, and stray scraps of paper eddying in the night wind.

– – –

Butch pulled himself up against the wall and yanked at the handle of the drawer. Nestled inside, among forgotten paperclips, unsent love letters and notebook papers scrawled with strings of number and girls' names all over then, was his Pendulum. Its metal was now dull with neglect, and the green diamond in its holster covered with a film of dust.

He stared at it for a long time, as it sat heavy and still in his hand. Light from the lamp spilled past the edge of the tabletop and onto the diamond, as though filtering through the dust and into its heart, and uncovering what had been held there for the past four years, and more.

– – –

_10 October, 1999_

The diamond and emerald dodged around each other in the air, arcs of flashing metal lashing behind them, and showering sparks each time they struck. Then there came a violent _crack_, and Buttercup flinched.

"What the hell was—" she spluttered. "Did you just make some sneaky move with your Pendulum or—"

"It was _perfectly_ legitimate, BC. And shouldn't you have trained more with yours before challenging me to a duel like that?" He shrugged and tossed her a smug smile, and she scowled at him.

The emerald of her own Pendulum withdrew with a metallic whirr. "Damn," she muttered, staring closely at it on her arm. "Now you've gone and chipped it."

"No worries." He pushed himself off the porch railing he had been sitting on, and landed beside her with a thump. "Now watch."

The green diamond slid back into the Pendulum. He then thrust the device against hers, such that their knuckles were smashed against each other's, and the two U-shaped openings of the holsters formed one rounded rectangle. The two crystals glowed fiercely for a few seconds; then, as the light died down, she saw that they were back to normal — and perfect once more.

"That's stupid." She snatched her arm away, rubbing at the back of her hand where it had touched his. "How is it that you're always the one who knows all the stuff behind the Pendulums? It's just . . . _stupid._"

"Like I said, I've been _training_," he said. "And I'd fiddled with them for — I dunno, a couple of weeks? — before . . . before I thought about giving you one. So of course I was gonna learn how they worked and stuff . . ."

At the sight of Buttercup still sulking he hastily changed his approach: "Well, if you don't like it, we can always sell these things and earn some quick bucks. That old guy told me the crystals are _emerald_ and _diamond_, man!" His eyes were shining as he pumped his fists. "Imagine what we can get from a diamond this freakin' big! We'll be the richest in all of Townsville!"

She snapped her head up to glare at him. "Oh yeah? But you'll be the richer one, won't you? Especially since it's the diamond Pendulum that _you've_ got there." She started to unbuckle the Pendulum on her arm. "And that's exactly why my Pendulum got chipped. Because it's not as _tough _as a diamond like yours."

"Oh, come on!" he whined. "Must you be so petty about this? I _did_ give you one instead of keeping them both for myself. And I didn't give you that one with the emerald because it was . . . inferior or anything. It's just that—"

He paused suddenly as though having said something he shouldn't. But after a moment of hemming and hawing he went on, with some half-hearted gestures towards her Pendulum:

"It's just that — well, the emerald has a lighter shade, see. And it . . . matches your eyes better."

She said nothing.

He peered at her from between the curtains of hair that framed the sides of her face. "Okay then, forget whatever I said. I'm sorry, all right? You can take my Pendulum instead. Hell, you can take _both_ if that's what you want."

It was only then that he noticed the grin spreading to all corners of her face.

"You're turning soft, aren't you?" she asked quietly.

He blinked. "What?"

"You _pansy._" She whirled around and jabbed a finger into his chest, not bothering to hide her grin anymore. "Just a bit of ranting from me and you're offering me _both_ Pendulums? You're totally useless. A _softie_. And officially _sissified!"_

He only narrowed his eyes at her as she burst into laughter.

"Well, _missus?_ Aren't you gonna fight back? Aren't you gonna beat me up or something?" She stopped laughing and folded her arms, tapping her fingers to her chin as though deep in thought. "Or maybe what I said just now was a little too mild for you?"

"Mild?" he snarled. His pendulum snapped into place on his arm once more. "I'll show you what's _mild!"_

For the next two minutes or so there was nothing but flashes of light in the sky, dark green against light, boy against girl, as they threatened to pummel each other back down. Laser beams aimed and missed; yelps of surprise punctuated fevered yells as each red shaft hit home, wherever it was.

At last the two of the crashed into the ground with the force of a ballistic missile. As she gasped for breath and regained her bearings she found herself pinned underneath him, his hands digging her wrists hard into the ground, and her arms raised above her head against the grass. He leaned over her while she struggled, and a little smile crept its way up his face.

"You've seen mild," he murmured. "Now I'll show you intense."

She rolled her eyes. "_Intense?_ Oh please, what can a wuss like you do other than . . ." But her words trailed off as she felt the grip around her hands ease, his touch fading away together with the slew of insults she had for him in mind. She made no move to move out of his grasp.

_Not this time._

A few years ago she might have — along with a well-aimed fist into his face. But now, she would not let this chance slip by. Not anymore.

The two of them stayed still among the grass. But then his smile grew just a fragment wider. "You smell nice," he whispered. Their foreheads touched.

She held her breath as his face inched closer. The tips of his hair tickled her eyelashes. She closed her eyes and waited.

And waited.

– – –

She felt his hand slip onto her face, tilting it just a little higher; and then a breath ghosted across her lips, warm, and growing warmer still, until—

"_BUTCH! What the hell have you done to my room? You get your ass here right now!"_

Her eyes fluttered open.

The moment was over.

He lifted his head away from hers, the smile that was on his face now gone. "On the other hand . . ." he faltered. "Guess I gotta go now. Brick's gonna kill me for honing my artistic talents on his walls." He snickered to himself, and ruffled her hair as he pulled himself off the ground. "See you later, BC."

And then he was gone, in a streak of dark green light.

She made no effort at all to stand up, and only stared up at the sky. Her hands lay curled by the sides of her head; her lips stayed slightly parted, touched only by the careless breeze of the fast descending evening. She turned to bury her face into her arm as hot tears started pricking at the edges of her sight, slipping and seeping into the ground, unseen.

– – –

_2 September, 2002_

She stood at the top of the clock tower. It was the tallest structure in the city's business district, and her silhouette burned high and sharp against the glow of the setting moon. The giant, sword-like minute hand ticked away behind her, fraction by fraction, as she paced back and forth before the cast iron numerals lining the base of the clock face.

She raised a shaking right arm. The Pendulum faithfully steadied it, and translated her agony into instant power. Steel rope shot out into the night, indistinct save for occasional glints from the crystal as it looped around skyscrapers and monuments around the tower, and tightened like a flexible belt around a lady's waist, though a thousand times stronger. Glass and concrete alike gave way like a buckling rollercoaster track, and shattered under the new and immense power of the Pendulum. The many people inside those apartments succumbed likewise — killed in their slumber, smothered by their dreams, and crushed by the very matter that once made their homes, as buildings came crashing down in rolling rumbles and clouds of dust.

_That's the good thing about death. You won't know it until it's too late._

The Pendulum's cable burst into life, a ghostly aura of blue stark against the night. Like a wild snake it crackled and hissed, three small triangles of light flickering in its midst as though grinning at its latest success, and at the one person that made it happen.

She smiled faintly to herself.

– – –

"_. . . and in the northern part of town around twenty minutes ago, police found the body of a man off Strastor Lane. He was identified as a Mr. Larry Matheson, aged fourty-five, and found with his head apparently sliced into half by an unknown weapon. An investigation is under way, and witnesses are encouraged to contact the police at . . ."_

There was a deep rumbling sound in the distance.

"What was that?" Boomer asked, as he tucked Bubbles — now fast asleep — into bed.

Brick said nothing. But his grip tightened around the wooden doorframe to Bubbles's room as he stared at the murmuring radio on the wall table downstairs.

"It's Buttercup," he said at last. "She's back. I think I know where she is, and I'm going to stop her. We can't let this go on any longer."

Boomer sank down next to Bubbles's bed, leaning against the bedpost as he ran a hand through his hair. "This is just crazy," he whispered nervously. "I can't believe she's going around and doing it all over again . . . You'd better go find her now, Brick, before she ends up wiping out half the—"

He raised his head to look at Brick, but all he saw was moonlight spilling in from the bedroom doorway, and the pale blue curtains fluttering by the wide-open window above the bed.

– – –

"_Ignite!"_

It was the same word as before, but delivered much more firmly this time, and the Pendulum responded in equal ardour.

From the top of the tower she could see the destruction that came with every twitch of her arm and every blink of her eye. The metal rope flew across every single tall building within her sight that was still left standing, and slashed it to rubble in an ever-gratifying song of smashes and booms.

"_That's the way, my dear . . ." _the spirit's voice cajoled from the shadows behind her. _"Release it all — all your pain, your misery . . . They never knew how you felt. Now make sure they never will again . . ."_

The Pendulum's cable continued slicing through the air, fed by the whirring on her arm that showed no sign of ceasing, and stitched the town into a giant tangled web of steel. And still it went on, even as tears trickled their way down her face.

_Do you remember? That time when you gave this to me, when you said all those things to me. I thought I was special to you . . . I thought we _both_ were. But nothing's changed, nothing's changed for us at all . . ._

Her arm gave an involuntary jolt as a cry of anguish escaped her lips. The emerald skidded to a stop, disoriented for a second, then came hurtling back towards her. She ducked; the crystal smashed into the clock dial behind her. Opal glass shattered to smithereens, and the iron frame holding it in place buckled, as did the hour and minute hands that came loose from their mounting and soared down — narrowing missing her head by mere inches — before plunging into the darkness towards the ground far below.

"_Buttercup!"_

She did not respond to the sudden call, and only sat hunched over by the end of the ledge, staring and staring into the space where the clock hands fell. Then she gave a sudden shudder and slid down, her hair splayed about her face as she lay like a broken doll. But her shoulders were shaking hard as she wept, lost in a limbo between memories and everything that lay — in pieces — before her eyes.

And still she wept, even as Brick landed on the ledge, his shoes crunching softly into the debris around her.

He watched in silence as the emerald dislodged itself from the shattered bricks of the tower and drew back into the Pendulum on its own. The whirr of the cable dulled as it slowed down, and stopped as the crystal clicked into place within its holster.

She did not deserve any of this, Brick thought. All six of them had pledged to save the world, but for her to destroy it as she did now — it was partly, if not all, because of Butch.

_It's not worth it. It just isn't._

She had needed someone. Not someone just to guide her, but to _be_ with her. And if Butch had failed to see that before, then perhaps he never would.

Brick knelt down beside Buttercup. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed a humanlike figure lurking behind the corner of the clock dial. He snapped his head to face it, but all he saw were wisps of pale mist that only melted into the shadows.

Gently he scooped the girl up into his arms. She lay still now — having cried till she wore herself out — with her arm hanging down her side, weighed down by the Pendulum whose crystal still held a writhing ball of fire in its heart. He gazed down at her tear-streaked face, and his heart clenched.

"You shouldn't have, Buttercup," he said quietly. "You really shouldn't have . . ."

And with a deep red band of light the two of them disappeared through the billowing smoke and into the night, wails and flashing lights in their wake as help finally arrived.

_-tbc-_


	4. Chapter 3: cut

I apologise for the VERY long hiatus. There were too many things I had to sort out IRL and I never could get into the mood to write, especially a heavy fic like this one.

So thank you all for being patient! I really appreciate it. And crits are always welcome.

Warning: Angst, self-mutilation, graphic descriptions and other related themes ahead. Also long chapter is long.

**Emerald Evanescence  
**_Chapter 3: cut_

* * *

_cut: (v.) to make an opening, incision or wound in a surface, such as skin, with a sharp-edged tool; to remove or exclude something undesirable._

* * *

She was falling.

Everything around her was empty, dead. All she could hear was her hair whipping in the air by her ears as she plummeted through the darkness. Pieces of dream and memory shot past her, all whispering voices and dying colours, up towards a lucid circle of light like the moon far away. Shrinking. Fading.

She raised her arm. Tried to catch the light with her fingers. But her back hit what seemed like the bottom of the pit with a loud rumbling thump. A sharp pain flared through her entire body, and she cried out in pain.

The light above winked out. The darkness around her melted away with the echoes of the crash. She heard a curious sound: the low hum of electricity and glass, growing louder and louder, until she saw the squares of pale light sliding fast into view. They slotted and stacked themselves flat underneath her and all around her, each piece of floor and wall sealing into one another with the soft pinging note of a champagne flute. Sealing into a room that would soon imprison her with their sterile brilliance.

A gasp caught in her throat. With what little energy left in her body she pushed herself off the floor, but the light burned into her palms and faded away to become nothing but mirrored tiles. The face behind them — _her_ face — was splintered. Then smirking. Then cackling in a shrill voice that wasn't hers.

She tore her eyes away from the tiles and struggled to stand. But the last piece had already fallen into place: her cell was complete. She stumbled past the closest walls, but there were even more beyond, more images of her desperate, deranged self echoing back at her. Each time she reached a dead end she could only helplessly draw in her breath; each time she tried to propel herself into the air and over the walls she realised she couldn't.

She was trapped.

Her knees wobbled, and she collapsed onto the tiles, smooth and cold through the thin cotton of her pyjamas. They rippled like quicksilver, then gradually stilled. But there came a pain deep within her head just then; she raised a hand to her forehead, and stared as her fingers came away sticky — not with blood, but a liquid as silvery-grey as the tiles were, flowing thickly down her arm and melting into the floor.

Snowflakes started dancing before her eyes. She shook her head to clear them off. She tried to lift herself up, but her arms suddenly went leaden, and dragged her further into the tiles. The floor stopped rippling and turned into ice underneath her, stinging her face, pricking her hands, and driving thousands of tiny needles into her very skin.

She couldn't move.

The tiles were eating into her. No, _someone_ was eating into her, eating her away from the inside like a parasite in the gut. She could feel it all falling away — her body, her mind, even her will to fight back and get on with the rest of life. Worst of all, she could feel that _someone_ gripping her by the neck and tearing off the masks on her face. Layer by fragile layer they came off, until the very last one came to light and burst out triumphant from her raw, burning face.

The mask fluttered down like paper, glowing and growing bigger until it was the size of the human child, and landed softly on its two feet. Feet clad in black Mary Janes.

It was herself. Her past self.

She stared at the child as its glow faded. It had the same shoes, the same clothes, the same hair, even though it was shorter than she wore it now. But the wicked grin and eyes that she knew she once had were not on the child's face — for those were melancholic eyes that stared back at her, and lips that were pressed together with nary a hint of a smile. And it was clutching at the rims of its dress with trembling hands: a mere girl timid and helpless, looking for someone who might understand her, at last.

Someone who never was there.

She screamed as another jolt of pain from her chest raked through her entire body. The child vanished, and she found herself back inside the psychedelic room of walls. Her fingers clenched, shaking, into the fabric of her shirt and found something wet, but this time she could not see what it was.

The snowflakes still danced before her eyes. They were multiplying, stretching into a film of frost that threatened to completely obscure her sight. One of the flakes — an exact replica of all those around it — suddenly shattered, its six arms breaking away like the spokes of a busted bicycle wheel. And each of those arms started poking around her cornea like the tiniest of knives, miniscule red tails of blood trailing and flicking, until the maze gradually painted itself a dull, dark red. She couldn't see, couldn't move, _couldn't think_—

Her eyes squeezed shut, then opened again.

At once the snowflakes vanished. This time she could see everything clearly. Too clearly, in fact — there was an actual knife half-embedded inside her chest, the same silvery liquid from before cascading from the wound, swelling and bursting like a sticky bubble with each painful pump of her heart.

Her mind swirled into an oleaginous rainbow of colours. She staggered, and fell at the base of one of the walls, her whole body shaking.

A shadow fell over her just then, and she slowly raised her head. A familiar figure was standing before her — not the child, but someone much taller. A young man. She recognised his dark-coloured clothes, the mirror shades propped above his forehead — its lenses catching the kaleidoscope of lights in the maze — and his black hair in its slick, short ponytail.

_Someone who never was there._

She choked back a gasp. She tried to reach forward and call out to him, but nothing came from her mouth. As she stumbled onto the floor again the snowflakes started creeping back into her vision, beckoning one another to look out through her eyes, to look _inside_, at her self deep within—

And then he was pulling her up, away from the deathly chill of the mirrored tiles. She gasped. She couldn't see his face properly — she never could, for it always seemed to be in shadow — and tried to touch it with her hand, but all she felt was cold air as her fingers simply went through his face.

He cradled her body in his arms as he knelt down, cupping the back of her head with one hand, and closing the other slowly around the hilt of the knife still sticking out from her chest. Now she could see his eyes: deep green, unblinking, but strangely calm as they gazed back into hers.

_It's not going to hurt,_ they seemed to be telling her, even as his mouth stayed firmly shut — and with a swift jerk he pulled out the blade.

She screamed.

The snowflakes vanished. The pain inside her chest erupted, and ebbed away just as suddenly. She closed her eyes and drew in a deep, ragged lungful of air — something she almost lost the chance to do again — and let her hand curl against his own. It was warm, reassuring, and still wrapped tight around the knife. The silvery blood that clung on to the blade was now flowing down the hilt, seeping thick and hot into the spaces between her fingers and his.

The seconds dripped by, and he neither moved nor said a word. She willed her breaths to quieten down, counting slowly to ten before forcing her eyes open again. "_Butch—_" she started softly.

The blade slashed right across her neck in a flash.

She froze. Through her burning vision all she could see was his arm outstretched, still gripping the knife he had just slit her throat with. Her blood was gushing out in torrents now, splattering from both her neck and her chest and the corners of her eyes, in exactly the same way as everyone _she_ had killed before.

_Why?_ she screamed at him. _Why are you doing this to me? I didn't mean to kill anyone! _He_ made me do it . . . And he told me to because of you! Because of all of you! _

The lights faded from around her, and from the darkness came the one voice she had always wanted to hear:

"_Lights out, BC. Sweet dreams."_

_– – –  
_

_9 September, 2002_

_Tap, tap, tap._

She opened her eyes, two rings of green glowing in the dark.

_A dream . . . It was all a dream._

She let out a deep breath. It plumed in the faint sunlight peeping in from a slit in the curtains, and disappeared. Everything was still again.

The door creaked open.

"Buttercup?" A face peered in through the small gap in the doorway, pink-coloured eyes blinking hesitantly.

Her eyes flickered shut.

The figure at the door slipped quietly into the room. In her bed she heard the groan of the door, a clattering of glass, padded footsteps making their way towards her bed. A slender silhouette came to her view, crisp against the yellowish light that flooded in from the open doorway.

Blossom set the tray in her hands down on the small table beside the bed. The scent of hot chocolate wafted across the room. "Are you awake, Buttercup?" she asked softly.

Buttercup said nothing. She imagined herself fast asleep, her breaths rhythmic, her chest rising and falling in time with them. But her mind's eye stayed wide open behind her eyelids.

The chair creaked as Blossom pulled it over and sat upon it. Then there came a small sigh, a tinkling of earrings, and the clicking of nails as she tapped her fingers against one another.

"I don't know if you're listening, Buttercup . . ." she started quietly. "I don't know if you _want_ to listen, but there's something I really have to tell you."

For a moment she wondered if Blossom was reprising her role as the eldest sister in the family, the one whose words, whose _advice_ should always be heeded. But as far as she remembered the conversations between them had waned over the years — prompted, perhaps, by the vague, one-worded answers she always gave Blossom.

And here she was, about to give her a little speech, about things. About life.

As though she cared.

_– – –_

_2 September, 2002_

She remembered someone carrying her. The wind, harsh and freezing against her face. The wails of sirens drifting in and out of her ears.

She remembered choking back her tears. She felt the arms that tightened their grip around her. The small weight off her arm — the Pendulum crystal — swung from its thin cable. Powerless.

She remembered the voice of the person holding her. _"We're going home now, Buttercup. You'll be all right."_ She heard the uncertainty in his words. But her fingers reached out, and found his shirt sleeve flapping in the wind. She held on to it for the rest of the flight.

She remembered the curtains caress her cheeks as they passed through the window, and into their home. Home. Where she belonged. She didn't know what home meant anymore.

She remembered two cries that greeted her. Suddenly she was in someone else's arms, enveloped in her embrace and the faint scent of her perfume. _"I'm sorry . . . I'm sorry . . ."_ she heard that person sob, over and over. The coolness of tinkling jewels kissed her skin.

She remembered another pair of hands unclasping the Pendulum from her arm. It clanged, a harsh note of metal against glass as it was tossed onto the coffee table. Her eyes refused to open, and her throat went dry even as she pleaded to have the Pendulum back. _"We— we should keep it somewhere for the time being . . ."_ a voice stammered, small and high and afraid. _"Right?"_

She remembered someone else's fingers brushing away the drying wetness on her face. It was a touch almost familiar, but not quite. She tried to open her eyes to see who it was, but he only laid her body, gently, into the soft warmth of the couch. _"Let her rest now,"_ he was saying. _"She needs it."_

She remembered hearing four voices. There was one more. _One more._ But she felt something lukewarm against the wounds on her arms, and something else even warmer drape over her chest. She sank back into the cushion under her head, and tried no more to speak and see. There was nothing more she could do — not unlike all those times she had gone through these few years.

They had all amounted to nothing.

_– – –_

_9 September, 2002_

"I don't know why you did all that to the city the other day, Buttercup. Honestly, none of us know . . ."

_I don't want to listen._

". . . but I wish I'd talked with you more. If I'd bothered to set my own stuff aside and just— just _asked _you how you were, if we'd gone for a walk together or something, just the two of us . . . Maybe you'd have told me what's on your mind. And I would've helped you. I really _would_. Remember when the Professor said—"

Blossom stopped and drew in her breath sharply. Then she went on, in a smaller voice than before: "Remember when we took the antidote, Buttercup? We promised we would take care of ourselves, and stay with one another, no matter what happened . . . And we would still protect the city with our powers even though there weren't as many monsters as before. Because this place is our _home_."

_It used to be. But not anymore._

She heard a stifled sniff, a small exhale. "They . . . they're convinced it was a localised tremour that wrecked the city that night," Blossom said softly. "Brick wanted us to keep mum about the truth for now, but we really shouldn't . . . And Tara— oh god, Tara didn't— Tara didn't deserve to die at all, no matter what . . ."

_What about the others? What about that scumbag in the alley? Did he deserve to die more than the others I've killed? Didn't all of them deserve to know _who_ it was that murdered them?_

She felt a warmth slip onto her hair: Blossom was stroking her gently, over and over. But her fingers were shaking, hard, as she shuddered and tried to hold back her sobbing with her other hand. "I don't want you to go around killing anybody else anymore. I'm your sister, I _trust _you. But you have to prove to me that you can do it, Buttercup . . ."

_I don't have to prove anything to anybody. I don't have to listen to you. I don't—_

"I'll leave this drink here. Take it while it's still warm." She sniffed again, and let out a deep breath. "They . . . they've given you a break from school and even sent a counsellor over, but we told her we'll take care of you ourselves. You just take a good rest. Call out for us if you need anything. And—"

There was a familiar clink. Not Blossom's earrings, but something heavier, more solid, and it came from the bedside table.

"I'm leaving this here as well. Bubbles wanted it locked away somewhere, but . . . we trust that you'll not use it again. At least, not for anything bad or dangerous. We don't want any more . . . things to happen again, but we still trust you. _I_ still trust you."

_No, you don't. I don't even trust myself. I don't even know why I'm doing all this. I can't even _see_ what I'm doing. I see nothing . . . I _have_ nothing. I just need . . . someone. Someone who will understand. Someone—_

"Sleep well, Buttercup. I— I've got to go for my afternoon class. But I'll pop in again when I get back . . ."

The chair creaked again, softly. Footsteps padded away, and then the door closed with a metallic click.

—_Someone who's never here._

___– – –_

She did not know how long she slept after that. But when she opened her eyes again the chink of light by the window had already mellowed into a soft gold. The mug of chocolate on her bedside table had long stopped steaming, but there beside it was her Pendulum. One of the emerald's facets caught the light, and reflected it into fragments all over the wall.

With unhurried ease she pushed herself from the depths of the covers, and reached out to close her hand around the weapon. Its metal burned against her skin, cold at first, but warming up quickly as she cuffed it back on her arm, its belts clicking almost with approval. A tiny glow flickered in the eye of the crystal: the machine was alive once more.

Her lips eased into a smile.

She cradled her right arm with her hand as though it were in a sling and, with a small trembling in her shoulders, pressed the tip of the Pendulum against her forehead. It was cold, much colder than when she had touched it just now, but the light in the emerald grew brighter still, until she could see it even from behind her closed eyes.

"Tell me," she whispered into the Pendulum's light. Her arms were shaking. "Tell me how I should stop this madness . . . I need a way out, and I need it _now_ . . ."

The Pendulum shot out suddenly towards the window. She managed to slam her feet against the footboard before it could wrench her clean off the bed, and ended up half-kneeling with her right wrist dangling high over her head. As she stared up at it the Pendulum morphed — no longer a machine, but the hypnotic pet of a snake charmer, all emerald eyes and metal scales that slithered down towards her on the trails of an invisible melody. Past her forehead, down her nose and mouth, and finally curving around her chin to hover over the soft flesh right underneath.

Its fangs dipped into her skin, and her breath hitched.

And then she was high above the room, floating upwards like ice in water until her back bumped into the scratchy boards of the ceiling. She couldn't feel or hear anything, but she could still _see_ — and down below was a dark-haired girl slumped like a graceless puppet over the bedcovers, barely held up by her arm still locked over her head, and the crystal snicked under her chin. An electric blue-white glow engulfed both girl and machine in a volatile sphere of energy, singeing the very air alive with lashing tongues of light and a deep buzz that crackled just beyond the edge of her hearing. A splinter of white light leapt up towards her, and—

She snapped her eyes open with a gasp.

She was back on her bed again. No, she was _still_ on her bed, and the emerald still under her chin. But the light that had flickered in it before had long died, and her arm, suddenly free of its invisible shackles, fell to her side with a soft thump. She felt the tip of the emerald leave her skin at last with a tiny pop. Spots of pain bloomed in its wake as it went back the way it came, each loop and bend in the steel rope tethered to it unravelling as the crystal slinked over her lips and eyes, in a smear of glass green and honey red.

Her tongue darted out to catch the small wetness coating her lips. It was thick, and warm, and salty, and it blended with the pulsating pain under her skin into the strangest recipe of pleasure. As the crystal clicked inside its holster once more she smiled to herself. Her eyes, the same unblinking green as those from a now distant dream, went on burning in the half-darkness of the room.

She had found a way out.

_– – –_

For once she was glad that Blossom still chose to trust her. It meant that she could delay having to face what consequences of her unexplainable urges to purge the world — with the walls of her home prison standing between herself and them — and it meant that she could spend more time with her Pendulum meanwhile.

If it could answer her plea the day before, then there was no reason it couldn't do the same for the many, many other questions she still had.

She sat on her haunches, staring at the three white candles burning on the floor before her. She was in the small space that made up the basement — half the size of a classroom, but made even smaller by the crusty shelves built into the walls, stacks of boxes sealed but unmarked, and dust covers draped carelessly over some of them. The candles' flickering flames threw their haphazard shadows all over the walls, gathering around her like a horde of curious onlookers.

What those boxes contained she did not know. Memories perhaps, hoarded by her sisters and the Professor himself. But they weren't important. She was there for the privacy her own room couldn't offer, not when Blossom still could unlock it from the outside. The latch on _this_ side of the basement door was crude and clunky, but it worked. And that was all that mattered.

She closed her eyes. The entire household was silent for the night, but she could still feel the low hum of electricity flowing underneath the stone tiles pressed into her bare calves. It came from the wall behind her, where the Professor's laboratory took up the rest of the basement space.

She didn't know what happened to the laboratory. Nobody did. It had been locked for the past few years and the key to it nowhere to be found, but right then it seemed as though some of the machines inside there were still alive. Improbable . . . but a comforting thought nonetheless. She let the background hum wash over her.

The candles continued to burn, trails of wax dribbling into the shallow dish at each of their bases. When she finally opened her eyes again there was already a sizeable mound coalesced in the dishes, and a million questions jostling for attention in her mind. Some of those she might have asked Blossom or Bubbles, if they ever managed to coax them out of her. Some she never would have voiced to anyone, for even she was afraid of the answers to them. And some she would have reserved for the Professor himself . . . if she still could.

She swallowed back the growing lump in her throat. She pushed the sleeves of her pyjama top up her elbows, and raised one arm across her forehead. The Pendulum on her wrist clicked once as though in reply. The emerald slid free of its holster and swung down on its cable, hanging in the air and spinning like a true pendulum would. Its facets glittered in the sparse firelight like eyes to the blocky shadows around her. A true audience that would never betray her and any word she said in this room.

"There are some questions I have for you," she murmured to the Pendulum, "and you will answer them truthfully."

The emerald stopped swinging at once.

She drew out a sigh of relief, and went on. "If the answer is yes, you will spin clockwise. If no, then counter-clockwise. If it's anything else then . . . just give me a sign. Point. Make a marking. Anything. Is— is that clear?"

The small light inside the crystal's heart burned. Then it started spinning on its own. Clockwise.

She smiled tightly to herself. It was working. But first she had to make sure.

"Am . . . Am I alone now?"

The emerald swung randomly for a few seconds, before it settled into a leisurely spin — again clockwise.

"Is it daytime now?"

She paused to glance at the basement door at the end of the small flight of stairs to her right. The latch was still in place, and the rim of space where the door didn't quite meet its frame pitch dark. When she looked back again the emerald was turning counter-clockwise.

_There,_ she whispered to herself silently. Now she could ask it anything, _anything_ she wanted. A face materialised behind her eyes at once, but she forced herself to push it aside. Right now that constant murmur of electricity in the basement was seeping through her skin into her very mind, and planting a question other than the paramount one she wanted answers for in this secret midnight vigil.

"The Professor," she heard herself saying. "Where is he now?"

The emerald's spin slowed down. Seconds later it fell still, even though her outstretched arm by then was wavering ever so slightly.

She tried again, this time in a smaller voice: "Professor John Utonium. He used to— he lives here, in this house. Is he . . . Is he still in Townsville?"

The crystal did not respond. But the light inside it dimmed, and the emerald started retracting up into the Pendulum with a soft whir. The shadows around the room rustled in the quivering candlelight and threatened to smother her entirely.

"No, please—" She flustered, clutching at her right wrist as though it were a separate appendage from her own body, trying to hold it steady in mid-air. _It knows,_ she whispered to herself. _It knows that wasn't what I came here for. _"I won't ask about him again. But I have other things I need to know from you. _I really do._"

It was foolish, really. Pleading with this little machine on her arm like it were a sentient loved one she had just lied to. But it _was_, in a way. She just had to tread her way into its psyche carefully.

"My sisters, Blossom and Bubbles." The names came out queer from her mouth, like chocolate too pure. "Where are they?"

The shadows ceased their shapeshifting. Then the emerald, so close to the lip of the Pendulum's holster, swerved suddenly towards the basement ceiling with an almost inaudible whoosh. It hovered there for a second or two before swinging back down on its cable like a yo-yo, until it finally settled into its original position some five inches off the floor.

She ran the side of her left hand across her temple and drew her breath.

"Do they care for me?" she asked the Pendulum.

Clockwise. Unbearably slow, but definitely clockwise.

". . . Do they love me?"

The emerald flared into life again But this time she could see flickers of pink and blue mixed with the white of the miniature fire through the green facets of the crystal. It continued spinning in the same direction as before, albeit at a growing angle until it was tracing an invisible circle around the air above the middle candle. She heard a tinkling laugh inside her ears, a little girl's laughter, and it faded the moment she tried to place an identity on that voice.

_What's the difference, anyway?_

She went on. "Am I alive?"

The circle grew bigger.

"But do I live?"

The emerald shuddered to a stop. It tried to turn counter-clockwise but couldn't, as though it were suspended in oil and not air. Finally it gave a frustrated tug on the wire cable, and started swinging in a plane instead. Back and forth. Back and forth.

A dry laugh escaped her lips. _She didn't live._ That part was true enough — she was simply one-third of an experiment gone wrong. But unlike Blossom and Bubbles she had failed to find a place for herself in this world, even after so many years since they were created. She could not lead, she could not follow. She could not reason, she could not empathise. All she knew was to solve problems by force and force alone.

Was that how she was made to be?

What that what the Professor would have wanted out of her?

Was that why _he_ never thought she was ever worth noticing?

"Does . . . does Butch care for me?"

The emerald continued oscillating. But the single line it was tracing in mid air contorted, gradually, until it became a small ellipse. An ellipse going clockwise.

She did not ask her next question out loud. But the Pendulum heard anyway, and in reply the emerald spun once — counter-clockwise — then shot back into its holster with a violent click that almost tore her arm right off. The flame inside the crystal extinguished itself.

One of the sheets over the boxes slipped and tumbled onto the floor somewhere behind her, sending a cloud of dust her way and snuffing out all the candles save for one.

The dowsing session was over.

_No . . ._

Her arms fell, as did her eyes that she had even allowed to glimmer with hope only moments before. She drew herself into a ball, and for the many long minutes after that she wept, tears witnessed only by the lone flame of the remaining candle and the remnants of silhouettes lingering by the walls.

The Pendulum, she knew, had spoken the truth. She was alone — not suddenly, not from the very beginning, but ever since she chose to grow up like the rest of them into an adult. A regular, human adult. Yet each passing year that she spent living under the same roof as the others only saw the growing disparities between _them_ and _her_.

Brick and Blossom, the most ambitious of their lot, naturally made a worthy sparring and study partner for each other. Boomer's incredibly Panglossian view on life often worked like a big brother's hug for the ever-timid Bubbles. There was no use hoping any of them would understand her, because they had never been _without _each other. There was no use putting up false fronts before them, because they would not know there were any to take off.

And there was no use revealing any fragment of herself to _him_ — the one person she had once hated with a vengeance, then foolishly fallen in love with — because he would not return any of it.

She jerked her head up with a sharp, ragged breath, and swept away the last of the tears under her eyes. _"Show me,"_ she whispered fiercely, pressing her curled fists hard into her forehead. "Show me where all the pain is . . . I want to see it, and I want to see it _now_."

With a muted series of clicks the emerald slithered out from the Pendulum. Its tip touched her right wrist — just beside the belt that lashed the machine to her arm — and sunk right into her skin. A sharp tingle laced across her scalp. The floor tipped onto its side, and her body started to spiral away. The next thing she knew she was floating against the ceiling, looking down at an empty circle of candle stubs and a lone flame spluttering atop one of them.

A single spot of blood bloomed from under the edge of the crystal. It grew, long and fat, into a lush crimson bubble that swelled bigger still. From above she watched, waiting to see how large it would become before it burst. And the moment it did she felt a sudden release of energy from deep inside her, and let out a deep breath as she floated down once more.

"Go on," she murmured.

Slowly, almost deliberately, the emerald inched away from her wrist, the Pendulum's belts undoing themselves as it did. It glided down her lower arm and towards the inside of her elbow, clear green against vivid red, as the river it drew forked into braided streams that wrapped all the way around her arm. Her folded right sleeve fell apart into two under the keen edges of the crystal, as did the two buttons on her top as it crossed her collarbone, though the leather cord she wore around her neck stayed curiously unbroken. The giddying river of blood went on running, soaking into the fabric of her shirt like overzealous flowers. From bubble into blossoms it grew, and still it went on spreading, and spreading, and spreading.

Truth and strength. That was what the Pendulum had given her. It had lit a path of escape for her the day before, and its answers today an affirmation of all that doubt and shame haunting both her conscious days and dreaming nights. And now it was showing her how to retaliate. _Pain._ Not towards other innocent people like before, but into _herself_. A euphoria of weakness leaving her body, but also a chastisement for all her wrongs before.

At last the green crystal stopped just above her heart. She squeezed her eyes shut. Her skin was clammy under her pyjama top and her breaths raspy in her throat. But she could hear herself laughing. A dry, desperate laugh that sounded uncannily like the shadowy voice of the spectre from so many nights before.

_It hurts,_ she wanted to cry, even as she pulled her lips back in a rictus of agony. _It really hurts._ But it was nothing. Compared to that pain inside her heart, this was _nothing_.

She cracked open an eye. In the facets of the now glowing emerald she saw her own self: pale, sallow, and matted with sweat and blood and tears all glistening in the candle's light. She forced a smile down at it, and the spectre's face grinned back in approval.

_– – –_

_26 September, 2002_

_Sharps._ That was what she called them. She had meant to gather them in one place for some time now. They were small, easy to displace, and risked another volley of questions from Blossom if she ever were to see them. Better to stash them somewhere safe.

In the depths of her wardrobe she had found a white cardboard box. It was about the size of a magazine digest, with a laminated matte surface that was slightly worn at the corners. A flurry of familiar images flashed across her mind when she lifted its lid and saw the small green towel tucked inside, and her heart gave an involuntary lurch. But she only pursed her lips, tossed the towel aside, and scrutinised the empty box in her outstretched hands.

It was good enough.

Since then, whenever any of her siblings popped into her room — be it to bring her something to eat, to chat with her and 'keep her spirits up', or even to ask her to a walk around the neighbourhood (which she complied with a few times, just to avoid suspicion) — she would make sure the box was tucked away between her mattress and the headboard, and then covered by the bedcovers before they could even open the door and see her in bed, listless and silent as before.

To the four of them this was an upsetting sight. If Buttercup still refused to talk, she might just lose herself in all those emotions and frustrations pent up inside her. Yet — and this none of them admitted out loud — it was far better than her going all around the city and killing everyone that so much as caught her eye.

And it was with this in mind that they contented with giving her more time alone. Time which she chose to spend carefully behind the closed door to her room.

She sat down in the narrow space between her wardrobe and bed — the furthest spot from the door — and emptied the box's contents onto the throw rug on the floor. A miscellany of small items scattered out with tinkles and clinks, not unlike the loot from a magpie's nest. There was a thumbtack, the snapped-off end of a razor blade, a few shards of bottle-green glass, a pin broken off the back of a Student Council nametag she had found in Brick's room, a pair of silver embroidery scissors, a half-empty disposable lighter, and scraps of wire with tips finer than a needle's.

She wanted to laugh. What a paltry collection. It was almost not worth the effort of filching each item from here and there whenever she could. But they were _discreet_, far more than her Pendulum which still sat innocently on her desk since that night down in the basement, and sufficient for the minor relapses she'd been experiencing several times a day. And without her sisters or anyone else in her face so often, she didn't have to keep reminding herself what they kept expecting of her . . . or who she expected to see instead. Nothing the slick pain from a pin dragging up her calves couldn't satiate.

At least that was that she convinced herself, as she absently fingered through the sharps with her eyes closed. She could easily have slipped back into the basement room and repeated the ritual. The latch would have promised her more relative safety, and the emerald's effect would have lasted longer. But somehow she didn't want that electric thrum from the laboratory around her again. It was so close, so constant, as though it were watching her every move and judging her with every other swell of energy from behind the mortar walls. It reminded her of too much. And she needed all the focus she could get.

She closed her hand around the piece of razor blade, and opened her eyes with a faint smile. That would do for today.

Her other hand slipped under the rim of her sweater, and she slowly tugged it over her head. Her upper body — now clad in only her bra and a grey tank top over it — was going numb in the coolness of the air, and ice-cold at the spot where the silver ring on her necklace lay between her collarbones.

And over that semicircle of skin, along that of her arms and even up towards her jugular, was a brand new geometry of lines. They shimmered in the daylight from between the drawn curtains, criss-crossing every which way towards her shoulder blades and back again. Most of them were already healing, albeit still puffy with pink scar tissue, but she didn't mind. It wasn't as though anyone would be seeing them at all.

They had felt good. And that was all that mattered.

The Pendulum had been the first to show her what the pain was like, and now she was growing addicted to it. It was different — more definite, more _raw_ — than that other source of agony she could still feel inside of herself. The sharps helped draw her attention away from that agony. They helped her forget. And every time she trailed another one along her body with a fresh ridge in its wake, the entire room would burst into cascades of colour. It would raise her into the highest skies, even as her own power of flight lay dormant, and cradled her back down laughing and crying into the sweetest slumber.

It was always beautiful.

The blade between her thumb and index finger gleamed, rhombus of light glancing off its surface. Beckoning. _Just a couple of lines,_ she murmured to herself, as she draped the sweater over her knees and leaned forward, tongue flicking out to moisten her lips. _Then no more._

She raised her left hand and ran a finger along the back of the blade. It was smooth, hard, cold; once round the corner the metal stung hot, slicing past her skin and into the pink flesh beneath. Her fingertip shot to the gap between her lips, and she sucked on it until the tiny spark of pain went away. But the tang of blood still lingered, and she couldn't help but grin.

_Do you remember?_ her own voice echoed inside her head. _You gave me the Pendulum. And so far all it's given me are these scars. But it's okay, because they won't last. In the end everything will still be the same._

She pulled at a stray piece of ribbon sticking out from under one of her wardrobe doors. With her head tilted to one side as if in a trance, she touched the ribbon to the upturned blade. At once it unfurled into two and slipped into her lap. Twin trails of red, marking the fallen soldiers in the ongoing battlefield that was the web of lines over her body.

Still smiling, she went on to trace the rest of her body with the blade, fingers light as a leaf gliding over water. Every intersection of new wound against old only drew a pinprick of pain and a small sigh from her lips. At last she found a new unmarked spot: the knob of bone at her right ankle. It had a strangely pleasing contour over which shadow danced with light from under the curtain. She held the blade to it and slowly drew it across the skin there. A thin line of blood streaked into being in its wake, shining as the ribbon did before. Relief coursed through her body, and her smile stretched wider than before.

_Do you see that? It's so small, so harmless . . . But you don't know how much it's hurting now._

_Because I don't either._

She broke into a rancorous laugh, leaning back and tipping her head until the top of her head pressed hard into the patch of wall behind her. Her black bangs, splayed all across her face, tickled her into more laughter that made her shoulders shake and her fingers curl around the length of the blade, tighter and tighter.

There was nothing she could see now. Nothing — except the same snowflakes that had once plagued a dream of hers. They flew in flurries like those of a Christmas glass globe. Shrinking. Swelling. Spinning. Twisting. Their antics behind her eyelids, together with the fast dulling pain inside her entire body, left her giddy and gasping for air.

The room started to spiral again. She clutched tight at her forehead, and felt her hands come away sticky and wet. "No . . ." she moaned weakly.

A tiny prickle came to the back of her head just then. It grew with every passing fraction of a second until the tingling rose into a distinctive hum. Only then did she realise it was not from inside her head, but beyond the walls to the room — a hum that could only come from the presence of another person.

Someone was coming.

"No—" she gasped. Her body gave an involuntary shudder as it snapped out from its hallucination. In a frenzy she fumbled for her sweater, but it had been pushed by her feet to a corner out of direct reach. And the sharps kept falling through the spaces between her shaking, bloodstained fingers as she tried to stash them back into the white box.

_Hide._

_Hide them!_

_Hide hide hide hide hide—_

The door creaked open.

"Buttercup?" came a girl's voice. "I—"

_– – –_

_18 April, 1999_

"Well, 'fess up _already!_" Butch snapped. "Whose ruddy idea was this?"

Buttercup kept her arms folded and her eyes firmly trained on the ground. "I shouldn't have come," she muttered for the umpteenth time.

Beside them, four youngsters stood in a row — their red and blond hair tousling in the wind — and smiled up at the ride that sprawled before them in candy hues and the ever-pleasant splashes of water. Glittering on the giant signboard just above the entrance were the words _Love Cascade_, its blue and purple script luring over hordes of couples, young and old alike.

Butch spat in disgust at the sight of the tittering crowds. "Are you guys crazy? We're not three-year-olds anymore! When— _if _we ever come to a stupid theme park like this, it's for the _adrenaline_. Meaning every other ride _except_ this. Get it?"

"But it really looks like fun!" squealed Bubbles. She clasped her hands and bobbed on her heels in delight.

"This is for total _wussies_, man!"

Brick held up a hand before Butch's fuming face. "Butch, you'd best keep your mouth shut if you're just out to ruin everyone's mood for today. And besides—" he tipped the brim of his cap just a little lower "—Bubbles is right. A slower ride like this ain't too bad a thing to end the day with."

Blossom gave a knowing chuckle from beside him. "We can all take this as a chance to do some reflections too," she added helpfully, before turning to smile at the girl sulking behind her. "_You_ especially, Buttercup."

"I might as well just dunk my head right into the water if I wanted to _reflect_ anything."

"Oh, come on, BC." She hooked an arm through Buttercup's and pulled her closer to the rest of the group. "I meant reflections on the _bigger_ things. Our life, our doings, our happiness, the people we love . . ."

Brick gave a poorly hidden cough, and Blossom rolled her eyes with a smile. "And things like that," she finished.

"Augh!" Buttercup snatched her arm away from her sister's and rubbed furiously at it. "Can you all just stop being so— so—" she made a garbled sound from her throat "—so _mushy?_ It's disgusting as hell!"

From behind her, Boomer laughed and nudged her with an elbow. "It won't be as bad as you think," he assured her, winking. "Butch'll be going in there too — so you two can just smash up the boat together after the ride's done."

"Boomer! You're not helping at all!"

He threw up his arms at Blossom, who now stood glaring with her hands on her hips. "_I am!_ I'm just suggesting how the two of _them_ can spend more time together, no?"

"That's the whole bloody problem!" Butch yelled. "I don't _need_ to spend any more time with her. And I'm not gonna sit through some lame-o lovey-dovey ride either! Why can't we just go try out the Spaceshot instead of—"

"Butch, if you want to know what that Spaceshot feels like, you can always go up into the air yourself and power down. But don't expect me to scrape you off the sidewalk if you forget to switch yourself back _on_ after that."

As Brick turned to saunter over to the ever-growing line of people before the water ride entrance — followed closely by Blossom and Bubbles in their skirts and strappy sandals — Boomer turned to look at the two green-eyed youths one last time.

"Look, I tried," he said with a shrug. "We all thought you guys could give in just for today's outing — well, I bet ten bucks with Brick that you would — but apparently—"

"Wait a sec — _'give in'?_" Butch cut in, narrowing his eyes. "What do you mean?"

A devilish smile crept up Boomer's face as he pinched his fingers and touched them briefly to his lips: "_Kiss and make up._" And with a wave and a laugh to the dumbfounded duo he turned and ran to the others waiting in the queue.

_– – –_

"Did you _have_ to do that?" protested Boomer. The bruises on either side of his face glowed fresh and red, and he winced each time he so much as touched them.

An empty boat rounded the corner, and bobbed gently along its painted track towards the wood-planked boarding platform. The ride attendant, a perky teenage girl in a blue uniform, beamed and nodded at Butch and Buttercup, who were next in line and equally fuming.

"_Shut up._" Butch turned around to glare at Boomer behind him. "Or I'll smash your face into the bloody boat."

"I'd prefer that girl over the boat, actually," Boomer promptly said. He threw a wink at the attendant, and she looked away blushing.

Bubbles slapped his arm and, laughing, nudged her siblings over to the edge of the platform. "Come on, you two," she said cheerfully, as Buttercup dragged herself into the waiting boat, followed by a very reluctant Butch. "There're people waiting to get on, you know."

"_My pleasure._" Butch tried to wriggle his way out of the seat and towards freedom, but Boomer shoved him back in — with just a little more force than was necessary. The entire boat rocked like a trawler at sea caught in a storm, and sent Butch flailing over the side and straight into the canal. Water splashed all over the platform and onto Buttercup, who still sat unmoving in her seat with her arms folded.

A second later Butch emerged soaking wet and gasping, as he clutched to the side of the boat. "_What the hell, Boomer!_" he yelled.

Boomer leaned over the canal as he slipped his hands calmly into the pockets of his hoodie. The grin on his face grew smug and suddenly devious. "We'll be right behind you watching," he said in a low whisper, "so you'd better stay together in that boat with Buttercup until the whole ride is over. Or Brick and I will give you _hell._" Then, in his usual bright voice as he stood up straight and waved his hand: "We'll see you later, folks!"

Bubbles stared between him and the still-rocking boat, her hands clapped over her mouth. The ride attendant, the front of her uniform now quite drenched, gave a stammering smile at Butch and Buttercup.

"E . . . Enjoy your ride."

_– – –_

The ride was unbearably slow. It meandered around the fringes of the grounds, passing through artfully arranged hedges and thickets that gave the couples in the boats both privacy and glimpses of the many other rides in the distance — rides that were a thousand times more exciting than this.

Butch, still dripping wet from head to toe, sat at one side of the boat as it gently went past bushes bursting with technicolour flowers. Screams of people in the roller-coaster and reverse bungee rides drowned the birdsong coming from the hidden speakers all around, and he clenched his fists against his jeans, swearing under his breath.

If it weren't for Brick and Boomer, he thought, _he_ would have been the one screaming his head off on one those rides right now. Hell, he would have broken— no, _burned_ the boat to a crisp, were it not for the canal water on his skin sapping his sheer energy, that damned safety bar stuck across his lap, and _her_.

He sneaked a peek at the other side of the boat. Buttercup had not moved an inch ever since the ride started. Her T-shirt still looked damp, and so was her hair that hung like thin icicles about her face. She was staring straight ahead with an elbow propped against the edge of the boat; then, suddenly aware of Butch's stare, she turned to scowl at him.

"_Moron_. Thanks to you I'm stuck here for the stupidest ride in my entire life. With _you._"

"It . . ." he spluttered. "It wasn't my idea, okay? It was your _darling_ sister's — and now she's with Boomer at the back spying on this boat!"

She gave a snort. "_Singing_ with her, more like. And I bet them two up in front are discussing stuff about world peace or whatnot. I don't know who'll even bother about you."

"Well, _you_'re talking to me."

Buttercup flushed. She folded her arms tight across her chest and looked resolutely away. "Fine," he heard her mutter.

For a long time the two of them held their silence. Only the trickling of water, the rustling of leaves, and the calls of insects in the depths of the foliage filled the space between them. Butch kept himself busy by squeezing the water out of his clothes and hair, and cursed when the boat passed through a cove of small trees. Overhead, the branches wove into one another like an arched trellis, fragmenting the late afternoon sunlight that fell upon the two of them in the boat.

And it was in this light that Butch quite unexpectedly caught Buttercup in, from the corner of his eye. She had long dozed off: her head was rested against her shoulder, her hand lay curled on the seat between herself and Butch, and her eyes were shut. For once her face was free of scowls and frowns and, in the golden glow of the waning sun, it looked almost . . . _angelic._

His heart skipped a beat.

He turned away at once, grabbing his head in his hands. What was he thinking? What had he been thinking _for the entire day?_ First he agreed to go for this boat ride; now he was there _admiring_ her face. _Hers,_ out of the gazillion prettier ones he'd seen. That was a face he had always wanted to punch. He hated that face.

_But—_

Butch peeked through the slits of his fingers at Buttercup again. She still had not moved, even as the boat stumbled towards a corner — and then rocked its way around it.

With a startled yelp he felt himself lift above the seat and crash down into it again. His hand grabbed the closest thing it could find, and he scrambled to get up. But this time he suddenly realised he could see Buttercup up close: the shadows shifting across her features, the lashes fringing her purple-tinged eyelids, and, most clearly of all, her lips slightly parting as an irritated mutter escaped them.

"What the . . ."

"B-But-But-Buttercup!" he spluttered. The rest of his body was frozen all of a sudden. "Damn, I _wasn't_—"

She gave a half-snort, and her head nodded away from his own.

Snapped out of his trance, Butch scooted back to his side of the boat — only to see that it was _her_ hand that he had grabbed when the boat turned the corner. He snatched his hand back as though it was fire that he had just touched, but already he could sense the heat spreading all the way to his cheeks. And it felt _nasty._

"I don't know what the hell you did to my brain today," he snarled to her, "but you're a bloody—"

In a flash she raised her arm, and his right hook that was aimed at her face went smashing into her palm instead. She still did not turn to look at him, but her head was tipped low, and a curtain of black hair now hid her eyes. Whether they were open or shut he never did know.

"I saw that," she said softly.

Butch could suddenly feel his insides squirming like worms in hot acid. "You . . ." he gawked. "You saw _what?_"

But she never said another word, for the wooden platform came into view once more, along with the familiar silhouettes of two very amused red-haired teenagers. The ride — and the entire day out — was at last coming to an end.

_– – –_

_26 September, 2002_

Butch couldn't help but smile at the thought. That was something he remembered surprisingly well — it was the first time he admitted _losing_ to Buttercup, both in combat and beyond. And it spelt the last time he saw her as a mere opponent he felt the urge to pummel into the ground.

He opened his eyes.

The walls to his room were now a darker shade of grey, even with the windows thrown wide open to catch what remnants of sunlight from the falling evening. He had slipped in from there after walking Dion home after class — partly to avoid anyone else who might be in the hall — and lay on bed for hours on end, just to lose himself in thought.

He had long forgotten the earliest years of his life. Only after realising that he — and his brothers — had the chance to grow up like regular people did he learn to live it to the full. It meant keeping his inbred destructive streak in check, and it meant adhering to the volatilities of the adolescent world, girls amongst the most intriguing of them all. One date had led to another, until he found his recent memory so full of pretty faces he could hardly remember any of them. Dion was the only exception . . . and perhaps Callie, for a little while there . . . and _her._

He prised himself off the bedcovers and reached for the third drawer in his desk. The Pendulum emerged first, cool and heavy in his hand, its diamond glowing bright in the half-shadows of the room. He set it aside and rummaged through the drawer, until he fished out a small bundle of letters. At the sight of their yellowed papers and the god-awful handwriting on them he paused, and a small smile curled up the corners of his lips.

Most of those letters were written after that eventful boat ride, draft after embarrassing draft that had found themselves stashed away into the depths of his desk. But once, on a whim, he had picked the best letter of all, stuffed it into an old envelope, and scrawled a single word on it before slipping it into the house mailbox.

The letter never got read.

Buttercup had torn it to shreds the moment she saw her name on the envelope. Blossom and Bubbles teased her relentlessly, and Brick never once made Boomer drop his wolf-whistling at her. Butch himself had joined in the fun, of course, for there was no way anyone would have guessed that the letter was from _him_ — not when he had taken extreme care not to even mention the ride in it.

And it drifted back into his mind once more, that awkward but vivid image of her fast asleep, on a tatty little boat in a brilliant sunlit fairground. He sunk into the corner between the desk and bed, clamping his eyes shut while he tried to shake off the memory. It did go away at last, but in place of it was a hazy darkness behind his eyelids, and from its depths came an all too familiar voice. His own.

_She doesn't dictate my life, and I don't dictate hers._

It was a lie. And he knew it. Bubbles had Boomer, and Blossom and Brick had each other to tide through all these strange adolescent years. He _knew_ she needed someone too, even though she never would have admitted it, but he was not there for her. He never had been.

A small flash on his bed caught his eye: the Pendulum had crackled into life, blue forks of electricity flashing inside the green diamond. He could feel its heat seeping into his skin even as his hands, by sheer instinct and memory, started strapping the device onto his right arm. As the final buckle snapped into place the diamond slid out of its holster with a soft whirr, and slowly floated towards the closed door.

"Why?" It felt strange to be talking to the Pendulum again, after so many years. "You want to make some practice shots outside?"

The green diamond turned around as though to look at him, and it was then that he knew.

"You're looking for your friend, aren't you," he said quietly.

He gripped the frame of his bed, its metal creaking in protest, as he stood up and slowly swung open the door. The hallway beyond was quiet, tossed into light and shadow by the sun angling in through the window at the other end. The Pendulum led him along it with a tug on his arm, slight but persistent. He could hear only the machine feeding steel rope to the green diamond, his footsteps echoing firmly on the polished floorboards, and — as he went closer to the stairway that split the hallway into two and led up to the second floor — someone wailing.

It came from the very last door above.

He broke into a small run. The diamond flicked itself back into the Pendulum and his body jerked back with the recoil, but he made it to the stairs. He leapt up it three steps at a time. The cries only got louder.

The barest scent of flowers hung about the corridor as he reached the top. The walls along it, painted pastel orange, now blazed gold in the twilight. His feet slowed down as they approached the room at the very end. Its door slightly ajar. And from behind it he heard that same crying voice from behind it, tinged with panic and desperation and grief all at once: _"I trusted you, Buttercup!"_

The door suddenly flew open, and a figure burst out from it in a flourish of pink and brown. In her arms she clutched a small cardboard box, a cold glint of metal sticking out from just under its lopsided lid.

"She . . . she . . ." Blossom tried to speak. Tears were streaming down her face, and she could not stop shaking her head. "She really needs you!"

She clapped a hand over her mouth as she stifled back a sob, and ran down the stairs still sobbing.

He turned back to the open door. The ever-shifting shadows inside Buttercup's room seemed to slink out and curl around his feet, but he closed his eyes to them. A strange wave of calm washed over him. The only presence he felt was the weight of his Pendulum on his arm. It guided him one step forward, then another, until he was through what seemed like the doorway. Then he opened his eyes.

The curtains at the windows at the far end of the room were drawn. Sunlight that was streaming in from behind it cast the small, green-painted space into a mottled bronze. The desk and cabinet, pushed against one wall, were stashed with bulging folders and well-worn boxes alike, filled with mementos and trophies of past glories: newspaper clippings, machine blueprints, an overalls pocket in one glass bottle, a coil of black hair in another . . . Her bed saw the same clutter, clothes from behind the half-open wardrobe doors peppering and almost melting into the bedcovers in the same blacks and greens.

And then he saw Buttercup, slumped against the corner of the same bed, half-hidden between the light of dusk and night. Her knees were drawn against her chest, and her head bowed as she huddled in nothing but a sleeveless grey top and sweats. She was shaking, hard, the tears smearing her cheeks glinting even from behind her matted hair.

He stood in the doorway. The light slanting in through the corridor window dipped further still, framing his silhouette like a painting and throwing his face into shadow.

"Why did you do that?"

The words came out flat and quiet from his mouth, less of a question than a passing remark. She said nothing in reply. She did not raise her head to even look at him. But both of them knew, and saw, the tears that went on falling down her face.

He marched over to the girl and grabbed her by the wrist. A small gasp of protest escaped her mouth. She tried and failed to pull herself back, for his hold on her was firm, and much harsher than she expected. But her arms were exposed all the same, and he saw nothing but a glaring labyrinth of lines, burning crimson against death white.

_– – –_

"_Why did you do that?"_

She couldn't bear to look at him. She couldn't even move a single muscle, to draw back her arm and hide it again, even though it was too late.

_You see it now, don't you?_

She wished her tears would just stop. They were hot, and they stung like needles cutting scars into her face, the way the Pendulum and all those sharps did to her arms, and her legs, and her body. But the next thing she knew those same needles were slicing into _his_ skin instead — he had pulled her whole into his arms, and buried his face into the side of her head.

Something caught in her throat then. She choked back a cry as he held on to her even more tightly, the pulsing of his heart hard against her own, hindered only by her necklace ring trapped between their chests. A rhythm — not electric, but _human_ — echoing the pain that still lay inside, seeping it out of her and into himself instead.

"_You're so stupid,"_ she heard him say quietly. The bump on his arm pressing into the back of her shoulder gave a snick, and fell in a metallic clatter onto the floor.

"_I'm sorry, BC. I'm sorry for everything . . . And you wouldn't have done all those things if I didn't— if I hadn't—"_

"Butch . . ." she started, faintly.

"_No. It's all my fault."_ His whisper was harsh against her skin. _"I shouldn't have neglected you. Or anyone, or anything else. But I'm here now. And I'm not going to leave again."_

She closed her eyes. In that instant she remembered someone else holding her — carrying her against the winds, and deep into the night — but the arms now were different. She knew whose they were.

And she was happy.

_– – –_

He stared at her arms, those horrible red lines swarming all over them like an infection, slicing into her flesh and simply breaking her into pieces like hammer against glass.

A pulse from the Pendulum arced from his arm right into the back of his eyes, and they burned a vivid green as he gave her a stinging slap across the face.

She said nothing. She heard nothing — nothing but how his breaths came out so short, and furious, and savage. She saw nothing but how everything before her was exactly the same as what she had seen in her dream before: his stance, his outstretched arm, the throbbing pain behind her eyes, the rapid thumping of her own heart that was now suddenly empty and broken and _gone_.

"You know something, BC?" he said quietly.

She felt nothing but the same hotness threatening to spill from her eyes, and a dread at what was to come next from his mouth.

"I thought I was the most selfish bastard alive. But I was wrong. It was _you_. It was you all along. And there's no point in me coming here trying to make up for things if you don't even _look_ at what you yourself have done."

A step back. A turn of his heel. Then he was gone.

For a moment she hazarded a hope of him returning. But the doorway stayed empty, and only fell a deeper and deeper brown as the last rays of light finally died away into night.

_-tbc-_

* * *

I'm terrible with accents and dialogue. But while rewriting all of them I somehow ended up being just a _little_ more sympathetic towards Butch as well. Hopefully the story works better that way.

Many thanks for reading!


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